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INVENTORS AND INVENTIONS.
INVENTORS AND INVENTIONS. Is it true that the world has never known its greatest men ? Have all its benefactors been ignored and despised or, rather, have not some occasionally found timely recognition and fitting reward ? Every new invention has had its own special fight before it could get its hearing. Who recognises the prince in the beggar ? Who sees the full-fledged eagle in that ordinary and somewhat unprepossessing egg? Who could always foietel that the new invention, untried and un- proved, was a world's blessing in disguise, an embryo helper forward of humanity ? Besides, every inventor has not been wronged by his generation: some have, and most grievously, but not all. In proof of this position we abridge from All the Year Hound the following interesting retrospect of the struggles and rewards of genius We will follow the course taken by Mr. John Timbs, in his new book, "Stories of Inventors and their Dis- coveries and, for every persecuted benefactor of society, we will find at the least two who met their re- ward. We begin with Archimedes, as of course. For, though the Pyramids were built, and the monoliths raised; though the huge caves of Elephanta and the City of Petrcea had been hewn out of the living rock, and the Pelasgians—or who ?—had built their Cyclo- pean walls wherever they had had the chance, yet Archimedes always stands first on the list of mechanical discoverers, as if the world had never known crank or pulley till he made both, and had never raised a stone bigger than a man's hand. But we must not forget that Archimedes stood upon the shoulders of the past. Well! Archimedes was no martyr. His Eureka, his boast about the world and the lever, were household words in every Greek mouth; his screw is one of the principal motors of the present day and his catapults and burning-glasses, his balistse and the Galley of Heiro received their due honours then, and remain unsurpassed even yet. The Great Eastern is not equal to that Galley of Heiro, with its temples and its baths, its storehouses, water tanks, and six hundred A.B.'s sitting down to fish and flour in the forecastle. Honoured by his sovereign, respected by the people, revered by posterity, the ghost of brave old Archimedes, wandering palely on the banks of the Styx, has no reason to complain of the injustice of humanity. No one was hung, drawn, or quartered for the magnet; only Columbus, when the needle varied in the American Atlantic, had to improvise a theory to save, perhaps, his life from the mutinous hands of his terrified sailors. Whether the Chinese, to whom the honour of the discovery belongs, have a martyr mag- netiser, like their martyr potter Pousa-now a god, or something like it-we do not know but, according to all accounts, their Magnetis Mountain, which played Sindbad such a sorry trick, has made martyrs and victims enough. Printing made a marty r, in a small way, of poor Guttenberg, who, what with debt (he spent the whole of a large private fortune in bringing his moveable blocks to perfection), political frays, the ill-will of the priests, and the enmity of the guild of writers, had but a troubled life of it. But though he was persecuted, and though Faust was held as nothing better than lieutenant and vice-regent of the devil, all the early printers were not so reviled. Old Caxton was honoured as he deserved; and cost the parish good hard money for the iiij torches, and the belle used at his bureying." Guttenberg's small napkin-press-like printing machine has been slightly distanced now by Applegarth's machines of eight cylinders, which print twelve thousand impressions of the Times per hour; by Messrs. Hoe's of ten cylinders, which print twenty thousand in the hour; and by that other American monster, which can print twenty-two thousand double impressions in the same time. Little did the good old German philospher and enthusiast dream of where his invention would extend when he first hewed out his wooden moveable blocks. Of gunpowder and its discoverers we need not speak. It has had its martyrs by the million, and is altogether too ferocious a compound for us to meddle with. Torricelli and Pascal, Reamur and Fahrenheit, with their barometers and thermometers, are pleasanter subjects to consider; so is Guericke, with his air-pump; so are all the inventors of the various diving-bells, by which human beings can go down among the sea- nymphs and the coral-roots, and crawl through the mazes of brown, green, and purple weed, growing in tufted bowers among the arches of the wrecks. The latest of these diving-bells is the American Nautilus, where the ballast or descending power is water, and where the air for breathing is condensed. This Ameri- can Nautilus seems to be about the greater succ ss yet made in the diving-bell department, allow len to remain underwater longer than any other cor nee hitherto devised, and with less risk of acr.ien or suffocation. For the race of automata we confess to little absolute sympathy; though, relatively, both as furtherances to the science of pure mechanics, and as examples of skill and ingenuity, they are not without considerable ilne. They are among the earliest and most universal crea- tions of man. India, China, and Japan, all have them in some or other form Egypt and Greece both dealt largely in them for their mysteries and initiations. Then there were various and sundry automata in the Dark Ages. Well! of these mechanical inventions, excepting the questionable reputation that clung round Albertus Magnus, and the unhappy fate of Alex, there are none to whom an indiscriminating public showed marked ingratitude; while, in later days, fame, honour, and riches have heaped themselves up in overwhelming piles, on the heads of those who have showed inventive talent or mechanical skill. We, the advocates of hu- man nature as a whole, are glad of this, as confirmatory of our own theory. There is no use in talking of the various schemes for aerial ships, or of the thousand and one balloons that have been sent up on new principles, and with perfect good faith that each of those new principles was going to inaugurate a, new era in our navigation. Perhaps aerial ships will be actual, commercial, and trading facts, before long; perhaps the London General Balloon Company will take the place of the London General Omnibus Company, with stations on the roof-tops of certain accommodating British householders. Except- ing the martyrs of the experiment, beginning with Icarus and ending with his American imitators of the other day, aerial navigation has not been a very ill- used pursuit. To be sure, people do say that they are all cracked who think it can ever be made of positive every-day use but then every new thing has been a sign of madness from time immemorial, and there is no reason why this new thing should be exempt. Roger Bacon and the Marquis of Worcester were both thought to be mad when they foreshadowed steam-engines and telescopes; Paracelsus was evilly looked on for the sake of his new drug, opium; and Napier of Merchiston, when he asserted that he could set ships on fire by a burning-glass, sail under water, by help of a certain machine destroy thirty thousand Turks without the risk of losing one Christian, manure profitably with common salt, and calculate by logarithms, was held as little better than a maniac, if not a wizard, which was worse. Rupert and his experiments fared better. But then Rupert was a prince, closely connected with the blood royal, and royalty in those days meant something more than taking off one's hat, or standing while the national air was played. Rupert did many noticeable philosophic things, fiery soldier of fortune though he was: he brought forward Van Siegen's invention of mezzotint, made the toy called Prince Rupert's drop's, which no one can rightly explain even now; blew up rocks and mines under water, made an hydraulic machine, improved the naval quadrant, made glass at Chelsea, cast hail-shot, and devised the useful metal since called "Prince's metal." He worked luxuriously at Windsor Castle, of which his cousin Charles the Second, appointed him governor; and there in his apartment swords and crucibles, rapiers, retorts, spurs, and mathematical instruments lay scattered all about in a confusion befitting his multiplex life. The first watchmaker was a great man. Was he accused of witchcraft, and burned at the siake for tampering with the mysterious laws of life and motion ? We do not know he might have been. And John Harrison of Faulby, the country carpenter's uneducated son, and the maker of the first marine chronometer, was a great man too; and he did not suffer by his in- vention. Quite the contrary; for he got twenty thou- sand pounds for it, when, after forty years' incessant labour, he had fully perfected it, and made it the reliable creation that it is now. No, all the inventors and discoverers have not suffered. True, Columbus was ungratefully treated, and Galileo knew (under a dominant priesthood) more of the superstition and cruelty than of the recognition and gratitude of men but all have not been so evilly handled. To William Hervey no one has grudged honours, though to be sure poor Servetus was burned, partly, for disproving the theory then existing that the veins carried the blood to the various parts of the body, a disproval afterwards confirmed by Harvey. Dr. Jenner has his statue and his colleagues, and rewards were not wanting in his r, lifetime. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu had a harder fight to go through than fell to his lot, and yet she was victorious in the end. To Newton and Herschel, Lord Rosse and De Yerrier, to Njepce, Da,guerre, Fox, Talbot and Wheatstone, Brewster and° Davy, the world owes great and glorious benefits but we never heard of any disposition to repay those benefits with ingratitude. So, after all, men and women are not so bad as_ it sometimes suits bystanders to say, and humanity is of smoother skin than the cynical will allow. i, Was not >Vatt honoured? Did not George Stephen- son find backers, friends, and disciples? Did not Arkwnght, the Bolton barber, make a colossal for- tune ? And what would be the Peels and the Marshalls, the] Hargreaves and the Cromptons, if their ancestors had not been inventors ? Ah, well! humanity has some- thing to answer for here for the machinery inventors the men who have made straps and wheels and pulleys do the work of living thews and sinews, have seldom got well off in the outset. They interfered with exist- ing rights, with a man's vested interest in his own muscles, and consequently had every working hand dead against them, at all events for a time, and until the sum of comparative advantage was pretty clearly made out. Hargreaves, the inventor of the spinning- jenny, died at Nottingham in great poverty and distress; Crompton's mule was taken to pieces for safety against the mobs, wairing and raging against all new-fangled machinery; Cartwright was defrauded the elder Peel had his carding-machines broken, and was finally driven out of the country where he lived; Jacquard, the great benefactor of all figure-pattern weavers, made no fortune by his invention, but left his family in such poverty that they were obliged to offer for sale the golden medal which Louis the Eighteenth had given him. The Chamber of Commerce at Lyons generously bought the medal, and gave twenty-four pounds for it—being exactly four pounds more than the intrinsic value of the gold! Earlier than alhhis, we find Lee, the first stocking-weaver, dying in Paris, heart-broken by poverty and disappointment; while later, John Lombe is poisoned by the Italians, whose secret of silk-weaving he stole and transplanted into England. No the history of machine inventors is not, on the whole, satisfactory; for we rarely find that those who originated an idea got anything by it except- ing persecution and hatred, while all the great fortunes made have some slight taint or other in some out-of- the-way corner, where only the most prying and impolite of biographers would think of looking. Even the highest names are not quite stable, and in the most portly bankers' books may be found a few dog's-eared pages with a smirch and a stain over the larger figures. Street gas-lighting had a hard day of it once, when a committee of the Royal Society, appointed by Government, met to decide on its merits. It was almost hunted to the death then, and tossed over to the kites and crows. Brougham, Davy, Wollaston, and Watt, were all dead against the pos- sibility of such a plan. Brougham bitterly ridiculed Accum the chemist, and one of the upholders and believers in the idea; and Sir Humphrey Davy asked, with a scientific sneer, if the dome of Saint Paul's were to be taken as a gasometer ? Frederick Albert Winsor and their scheme stood their ground and after the due and proper amount of badgering which such an innovation must expect, the point was gained, and London was lighted with gas. This was in 1825; though the first triumphant experiment of lighting Saint James's Park had been made three years earlier, namely, in 1822. But we have not come to the end of street-lighting: yet; though, indeed, nothing has hitherto been dis- covered which can satisfactorily supersede coal gas. But it has to come, being among the future "destinies" of science. The patent air-light (from hydro-carbon mixed with atmospheric air) cost thirty thousand pounds in the experiments which were made, to see if it would do better than gas-but it failed and though the lime ball, the Bude, and the electric lights, are all flaming successes themselves, they are all too expensive for the open streets and public buildings. Still we may be sure that street-lighting, like many other things, is in its infancy, and that, when it comes to maturity, it will be widely different to what it is now. The question is stirring, evidently. We hear of sundry chemists poring over all sorts of calculations and analyses, preparatory to setting the world in a blaze with a new light; we may rest assured that our gas-lamps will be blown out, and some new-fashioned flames take their place. It is the way of the world-the way by which all inventions have fought, risen, culminated, and gone out, when a better thing has been discovered.
"CARS AND STAGES" IN AMERICA.
"CARS AND STAGES" IN AMERICA. In America, though there are "busses," they are rarely eaRed by that name. Bus" is British, and moreover supposed to be indelicate; and omnibus" is by far too long a word for such fast-going people. Railroad" is also slow," and labours under a similar objection. The word car" is therefore the substitute for every 'species of conveyance by rail, and that of stage" for every public carriage on the common road. "Waggon" is a term applied to all sorts of private vehicles, from a farmer's cart to the smart-going drosky in which the dashing citizen sports his pair of high-mettled bloods 2' 40" that is to say, animals capable of getting over a mile in that space of time; and sleighs" are modes of progression better known there than here, cerresponding to the English sledges. But in many respects the Americans are ahead of the British in travelling. Their omnibuses far sur- pass ours in point of elegance and comfort. Instead of entering a damp, straw-covered ill-ventilated vehicle, as in London, you find a light, clean, wax-clothed or carpetted carriage, commodious and airy, with agree- able plush or velvet cushions, and handsome frescoes or paintings between the panels, in lieu of the hideous advertisements and placards that are to be found in London. The vehicle is also more simply managed: there are no bawling cads" or conductors; the coach- man alone, perched up on his small and solitary seat in front, manages all. At a signal you stop him on the street, and he relaxes a long leathern strap, which passes from his arm along the top of the interior of the vehicle to the door. So soon as you open and enter this, he again pulls it tight. The belt affords you useful support as you proceed to your seat, and it i'3 still more serviceable to the driver, by keeping you in till you have paid. You pass your money through a small opening near him in front, and he deposits it or gives you change from a small box on his left. Being reckless as any of his London compeers, he takes the precaution of causing you to pay on en- trance, lest what is termed a spill" should occur; that is to say, lest a wheel is whisked off, and you be all pitched on one side. By a pull on the strap, you also stop him when you want to descend; one or two applications of the hand causing him to draw up on the right or left side of the road as you may desire. The "cars," drawn by horses on a sort of tramway; or rail, through the American towns, are not so agree- able. Properly conducted, they would be more so, as their movement is exceedingly smooth; but while the stages" or omnibuses are rigidly confined to twelve inside, there seems no limit to the number of passen- gers which the conductor (for here there are conductors) will contrive to stow into the interior of his car. About thirty is the number licensed to be carried by law, but on emergencies he M 111 introduce at least twenty more, until the whole-dragged usually by only one pair of horses-becomes a positive instance of cruelty to animals. The American ladies, too, in these cars, con- sider themselves entitled to exercise what they deem the inherent and indisputable privilege of their sex. No matter how wearied or lame a man may be, he is expected to rise and give up his seat to the first female who enters after the vehicle is full of the regular num- ber. The sacrifice is usually assumed as a right, with- out receiving the slightest acknowledgment in return. He takes up his stand along the middle of the carriage, and gallantry, pursued to this extent, of course only operates as a bounty to the cupidity of the proprie- tors the conductor continuing to take up ladies until every man is turned from his seat, or the vehicle by no possible management can be contrived to contain more. The regular railroad cars," drawn by steam on the usual iron rails, are on the whole superior to those of this country. There are, indeed, no such accommodations as those of British or continental first-class carriages; for all ranks, save the blacks, being held equal in Ame- rica, Jonathan tolerates no distinction. The President, if he travels, must be content to travel in the same car with his blacksmith or barber, though it must be owned that blacksmiths and barbers, with'every other con- dition of men here, when they travel, generally are arrayed in their best, and conduct themselves with pro- priety. But there are none of those hideous boxes which render travelling for second and third-class pas- sengers in England so abominable. The American railroad car is usually a vehicle be- tween thirty and forty feet long, to which the passengers may enter at a door at each extremity. On each side there are comfortable velvet-stuffed benches, with backs equally protected, which contain two seats each. Along the centre there is an ample walk, where the passenger can perambulate at pleasure. In winter it is provided with a stove, in summer with ice-water. On some of the railways the seats are isolated, so as to form arm- chairs, on which Jonathan can throw himself back, and by means of a foot-board which springs up in front, perch his feet in the air at pleasure. They are the very perch his feet in the air at pleasure. They are the very quintessence of indolence. Sleighing," or sledging, is a favourite winter mode of travelling in the cities of America, and in Canada, throughout the province, it is in vogue half the year. The sledges are of the same form as the English, but on a scale much more extensive, drawn by four, eight, and sometimes twelve or sixteen high-mettled prancing horses. The ladies, above all, love this mode of riding. Parties of fifty or a hundred each are frequently made up from the larger hotels, for the purpose of enj oying a two .hours' drive, which frequently terminates in a pic-nic. Some rustic inn or country edifice, belonging to the proprietors, is usually the scene of the festivity; and though the gentlemen's noses generally look blue, and are often most uncomfortably cold, it must be owned that the faces of the ladies wrapped up in their furs or buffalo hides, are sometimes eminently at- tractive. One cannot quit the subject of travelling in America without, in some degree, mentioning the splendid river steamboats. Often three or four hundred feet long, these more resemble floating palaces or hotels than anything to be found in England. The only ob- jection to them is the reckless mode in which they are frequently driven. A snag," or sunken tree, which is to penetrate your bow, or a sandbank where you are to be left high and dry," is often a disagreeable im- pediment or termination to a journey and it must be owned that, however agreeable the excitement may be to the natives, and how interesting soever the question of their respective speed is to the proprietors of rival steamboats, a stranger at first by no means enjoys the trip when the captain of one vessel is plying his fires with turpentine, and the other sitting perched upon the safety-valve. But one objection of a painful nature remains. Throughout the United States a foreigner cannot fail to be struck by the insulting contumely with which, in all public conveyances, the negro is treated. On the regular railways a car is coarsely fitted up for him, with accommodation scarcely superior to that provided for lumber and capital; but from the city stages he is invariably, and from the cars generally, excluded. In the Abolition States of the north, this custom is more common than even in the slavery territories of the south, and it often leads to scenes truly distressing. The slightest tinge of dark blood suffices on such occa- sions to exclude, and, no matter how vital may be his errand, the unhappy Ethiop is rigidly shut out. We have known an African minister of the gospel quitting a couch of sickness, and hastening to impart religious consolation in a chamber of death, rigorously and re- morselessly, on an inclement day, thrust into the streets from a vile New York railway car.—Leisure Hour.
CURIOUS PHYSICAL ANTIPATHIES.
CURIOUS PHYSICAL ANTIPATHIES. Every person reckons among his acquaintances indi- viduals who are peculiarly "touchy" upon certain points. In an ordinary way it is plain-sailing enough with them but just venture upon certain topics and they are "nowhere" in a moment. Pressure upon some hidden mental spring makes all sorts of secret drawers of the mind shoot out suddenly, to the amaze- ment of the unconscious operator, and he will go awav with a firm conviction that there is some screw louse in that particular quarter at least. Familiar as we are with mental peculiarities of this kind, there is a parallel range of physical ones, which are generally very little known. The physician who sounds the depths of our bodies, and knows how oddly the mucous membrane of one individual behaves, and what eccen- tricities are shown by the epidermis of another, is aware that this "too, too solid flesh" can have fads and fancies, tastes and dislikes, and show them, too, in a manner as decided and demonstrative as though the mental instead of the grosser organs were implicated. These physical idiosyncracies sometimes put on such extraordinary features, that we fear, in relating some of them, the reader will think we are romancing. For instance, he will readily assent to the old saying-, that what is one man's meat is another man's poison nevertheless, he will doubt our good faith when we tell him of a man being poisoned by a mutton chop. Dr. Prout, in his valuable work 011 the Stomach, however, relates just such a case. This individual, with a con- tumacious stomach, could not touch mutton in any form. It was at first supposed that this dislike arose from caprice the meat was therefore disguised, and given to him in some unknown form, but with the in- variable result of producing violent vomiting and diarrhoea; and from the severity of the effects, which were those of a virulent poison, there can be little doubt that if the use of mutton had been persisted in, his life would soon have been destroyed. Strange and irrational as this behaviour may appear to be, yet it is only a rather exaggerated example of stomachic capri- ciousness. Some persons cannot touch veal, others are prostrated by a few grains of rice. We happen to know an individual that is immediately seized with all the symptoms of English cholera if hei take as much as a single grain of rice. Such is his susceptibility to the presence of this article of food, that the most infini- tesimal portions are instantly detected. Thus, for instance, having been seized with illness immediately after drinking beer, it was discovered that a grain or two had been introduced into the bottle for the purpose of giving it a head. Eggs are equally obnoxious to some individuals. Mr. Erasmus Wilson relates the case of a patient who was seized with a violent bowel com- plaint suddenly, without any apparent cause. Know- ing, however, his proclivity to violent gastric irritation from touching eggs, he at once declared that he must have partaken of the obnoxious food. It could not be traced, however, until the cook acknowledged that she had glazed a pasty, of which he had partaken, with the white of an egg. f Shell-fish is well known to disarrange the digestive organs of some people. We happen to be acquainted with a lady who unfortunately partook of a lobster- salad for supper at a ball with the inconvenient result of almost immediately breaking-out into a rash over the face, neck, and arms. For this reason mussels, shrimps, and cockles cannot be touched^ by many individuals. In order to understand, the immediate and extraordinary effect thus produced upon the skin in consequence of partaking of food irritating to the stomach, we must inform our reader that the lining of the whole digestive apparatus is only a continuation of the epidermis.. Let us imagine a double night-cap, one end of which is thrust into the other, and we have at once the true idea of the relation the epidermis, or outside skin has to the mucous membrane, or inside skin, which lines the stomach and intestines. With this explanation, it is easy to understand how it is that an irritating poison coming in contact with the stomach immediately tells its tale on the fair shoulders of the ball-room belle. Results equally distressing, if not so unsightly, are produced in some individuals without the introduction to the stomach of articles of food or medicine. Float- ing particles in the air are sometimes sufficient to pro- duce all the symptoms of spasmodic asthma. We once knew a dispenser who could not stop in the room with an unstoppered bottle of ipecacuanha. Even if it were opened thirty or forty feet away out of his sight, he was instantly aware of the fact, in consequence of the sudden seizures to which he was liable. We have heard of an old lady, residing in Holborn, who at times was subjected to sickness and vomiting in the most sudden and unaccountable manner. At last her phy- sician, suspecting some atmospheric influence, made inquiries, and found out that a room on the ground- floor, at the back of the house, was used as the dispen- sary, whence the emanations from the ipecacuanha penetrated to her apartments on the second-floor There is a very distressing complaint, popularly know n as the hay-asthma, which affects a certain small propor- tion of the population. At the season of hay-making, these individuals are suddenly seized with what appears to be a very bad innuenza—running at the nose, sneez- ing, coughing, and in some cases a violent irritation of all the mucous surfaces, the eye-lids, and the air-passages, and the nose swelling in the most extraordinary manner. We have seen individuals quite, blind for a time from this cause. Persons so affected can only find relief by immediately retreating from the vicinity of the hay- fields. The Duke of Richmond, for instance, who is particularly susceptible to the influence of hay-asthma, retreats every hay-making season to Brighton, to avoid his well-known enemy. Floating vegetable particles of the seed of the grass are the cause of this extraordinary affection. That these travel a long distance is clear, inasmuch as persons susceptible to their influence feel uneasy even v, Ithin a mile or two of hay-fields. There are animal emanations however, which appear to affect some almost as energetically; as these vegetable ones. The atmosphere of cats, for instance, is intolerable to them. We have heard of a military gentleman who would sometimes become suddenly and violently agi- tated during dinner, so much so that his speech left him, and he seemed on the verge of an apoplectic seizure. His friends however, knew what this meant, and im- mediately began searching for the cat, which was sure to be found in some part of the room, although before unobserved. To other individuals the presence of rabbits is equally obnoxious, they seem to catch cold merely from going near them, and all their symptoms are greatly augmented if they happen ,to stroke them down. We have lately heard of two individuals of the same family who are affected in the same manner from | the same cause some people we know cannot sit in the same room with a cheese, others are obliged to retire before the presence of cooked hare. We have hitherto dwelt merely upon certain idiosyn- cratic susceptibilities to certain articles of medicine, ISO food, .and animal emanations. The disease, spasmodic asthma, just alluded to,, as to its effects is so nearly allied to many of those related, that there can be no doubt they arise from a .common cause, irritating par- ticles floating in the air, or atmospheric influences. A man goes to bed perfectly well, and awakens in the night with a difficulty of breathing, which threatens to suffocate him; after a while it goes off, but if he re- mains in the same place he is always liable to a recur- rence of the fit. Dr. Ityde Salter, who has devoted much attention to this capncious disease, gives it as his experience that change of air, as in hay-asthma, is the only cure for this distressing complaint. As a general rule, those persons who are affected in pure country MV, invariably find relief, or rather complete immunity from attack, in the moist air of dense cities, whilst city asthmatics will become instantly well in the dry pure air of the country. Dr. Salter relates a most singtdar couple of cases illustrative of this extraordinary capriciousness. One patient could only breathe in Norwood, the other only in London. If the one who could live at Norwood attempted to go to London, he was invariably stopped by a seizure of asthma at Cam- berwell-green. If, on the other hand, the patient who was exempt in London, attempted to go to Norwood, he found Camberwell-green the limit of his journeying —if he passed this his enemy immediately attacked him. CamberwelVgreen was their joint difficulty, and will remain so to the end. Many persons who come up from the country for the "hest advice" for this complaint, find that in town they suddenly lose their asthma, and are somewhat disappointed that they cannot show the;, doctor the effect of a fit upon them.: In many cases, however, they learn that the true doctor is city air-the worst; cify air, moreover, is generany the best for them. Thames-street atmosphere is particularly efficacious, and some even pick out the foggiest, densest, foulest lanes of Lambeth or Bermondsey as to them the balmiest, most life-giving of neighbourhoods. There are more extraordinary instances of idiosyncratic sus- ceptibilities on the part of 'the air-tubes of some per- sons than even those examples would imply. For instance, some asthmatics can live at the top of a street in perfect health, whilst at the bottom of the same street they seem to be at the last gasp. We happened to know of a patient, who is more dead than alive at the top of Park-lane, but recovers immedi- ately at the bottom of the same street; and Dr. Watson tells us that he had an asthmatic patient who could sleep very well in the Red Lion, at Cambridge, but could never rest for a minute, on account of his asthma, in the Eagle in the same town. Some asthmatics, with air-tubes more capricious and difficult to please than ordinary, make it the business of their Fves to travel about in search of the air 'best suited to them. Thus, in their wanderings, they ex- perience every conceivable degree of exasperation of, or exemption from their disease; possibly in some lovely spot where the patient would willingly abide as in an eaiihly Eden, the asthma suddenly and rudely gxipp him by the throat and bids him depart or die. Journeying onward he may happen to come upon some barren ridge, or possibly upon that Plutonic region, known as the" Black Country." Here the patient would huxry onward with horror and affright, but sud- denly his tyrant interposes. This air suits him, it imperiously cries, and here. the slave of irritable mucus membrane is but too glad to end his pilgrimage, com- pounding with dreary scenery and a savage people, for the perfect freedom of drawing the breath of life,—Once a Week. I
GOOD-NATURED AND ILL-NATURED…
GOOD-NATURED AND ILL-NATURED FRIENDS.. If you, benevolent reader, wish to do a kindness, and to elicit grateful feeling, go and tell a man who is growing bald that his hair is getting thicker; tell a man of 70 that he is every day looking younger; tell a man wh 1 can now walk but at a slow pace that he walks uncommonly fast; tell a middle-aged lady, whose voice is ( 'acking, that it is always growing finer; tell a cot- tag )1' who is proud of his garden, about the middle of 0 ober, that his garden is looking more blooming than i1 June; tell the poor artisan, the skilled workman, 1 0 has been driven by want of work to take to break- i stones for the road (which in the Scotch mind holds t place which sweeping a crossing holds in the Eng- i sh), that you are pleased to see that he has got nice T'lt work for these winter days; and, if you be the p rish clergyman, stop for a few minutes and talk ci ierfully to him; if you passed that poor down- "Y irted fellow to-day with only a slight recognition, he iuld certainly fancy (with the ingenious self-torment fallen fortunes) that you did it because he has been liged so sadly to come down." f. But if you want to prove yourself devoid of the in- .nctive benevolence of the gentleman, you will walk ) to the man with a look of grief and astonishment, id say, "Oh, John, I am sorry to see you have come this." I have seen the like done. 1 have known sople who, not from malignity, but from pure stolidity ■ggad coarseness of nature, would insist on the man's mind, how far he had come down. Gelimer, at Rome (or Constantinople, I forget which), did not feel his fall more than the decent Scotch carpenter or mason busy in his heap of stones by the roadside. And who, that had either heart or head, but would rather try to keep him up than to take him further down? It is the delicate discernment of these things that marks the gentleman and the gentlewoman. Such in- stinctively shrink from saying or doing a thing that will pain the feelings of another. If they say or do anything of the kind, it is not because they don't know what they are about; while vulgar people go through life unintentionally and ignorantly sticking pins into more sensitive natures at every turn. You, my friend, accidentally meet an old school companion. You think him a low-looking fellow as could well be seen. But you say to him kindly that you are happy to see him looking so well. He replies to you, with a confounded candour, I cannot say that of you; you are looking very old and careworn." The boor did not mean to say anything disagreeable. It was pure want of dis- cernment. It was simply that he is not a gentleman, and can never now be made one. Your daughter, poor thing, is getting hardly any partners," said a vulgar rich woman to an old lady in a ball-room; "it is really very bad of the young men." The vulgar rich woman fancied she was making a kind and sympathetic remark. It is to be recorded that sometimes such re- marks have their origin, not in ignorance, but in intentional malignity. Mr. Snarling, of this neighbour- hood, deals in such. He sees a man looking cheerful after dinner, and laughing heartily. Mr. Snarling ex- claims, Bless me, how flushed you are getting! Did any of your relations die of apoplexy?" If you should cough in the unhappy wretch's presence, he will ask, with an anxious look, if there is consumption in your family. And he will receive your negative answer with an ominous shake of the head. I am sorry to hear," says Mr. Snarling, the week after your new horse comes home, "I am sorry to hear about that animal proving such a báå bargain. I was sure the dealer would cheat you." It was very sad indeed," says Mr. Snarling, "that you could not get that parish which you wanted." He shakes his head, and kindly adds, "especially as you were so anxious to get it."—Frazer's Magazine.
Illisalbitms fnfellipa.
Illisalbitms fnfellipa. ADMIRALTY CIRCULARs.-The confusion created in the mind of the sailor by the multitude of circulars, each one contradicting the other, each upsetting some previous arrangement, was in its manifestation ridicu- lous, were it not that in effect it was too serious. We have seen two uld salts going away after the public reading on the quarter-deck of some circular, one say- ing to the other—"I say, Bill, what was it all about ?" I'm blessed if I know," would be the answer; "some- about our pay and provisions, I s'pose, but I've se'ed so many alterations that I never knows what I'm to get, or what my old woman is to get, or what I'm to do, or where I'm to go. I wish them Lords would know their own minds, that a fellow might have some knowledgeableness about himse1*—" Fleets and Na- vies.in Blackwood's Magazine. AN AWKWARD COMPARISON.—A noble lord of the middle of the last century, resident near Edin- burgh, was a man of weak intellect, though he some- times said a clever thing. He was at one time de- tained in the Canongate jail, as men are now kept in lunatic asylums, that he might be out of harm's way. Some English officers visiting the prison, asked him, with some surprise, how he got there. Much as you got in the army," said the earl; "less by my own deserts than by the interest of my friends." ENGLISH ENERGY IN CEYLON.-When the Eng- lish landed in Ceylon, in 1796, there was not in the whole island a single practicable road, and troops, on their toilsome marches between the fortresses on the coast, dragged their cannon through deep sands along the shore. Before Sir Edward Barnes resigned his government, every town of importance was approached by a carriage-road, and the long-desired highway from sea to sea, to connect Colombo and Trincomalee, was commenced. Civil organisation has since been matured with equal success; domestic slavery has been abolished, religious disqualifications removed, compulsory labour abandoned, a charter of justice promulgated, a legisla- tive council established, trading monopolies extin- guished, commerce encouraged in its utmost freedom, a1' the mountain forests felled to make way for planta- tions of coffee, whose exuberant produce is already more than sufficient for the consumption of the British Empire.Sir J. Emerson TennenVs Ceylon." A SHORT CEREMONY.—Old Squire Jack, as he was familiarly called (says an American paper), was for many years a justice of the peace in and in addition to issuing warrants and executions, was fre- quently called upon to perform the marriage ceromony. One bitter cold winter night, about twelve o'clock, he was aroused from his sleep by a knock at the door. In no very amiable mood he jumped from his warm bed, and, throwing up the window, called out-" Wbols there?" "Halloa, Squire!" was the reply, "we want to get married." You're ONE! and now be off with you!" roared the Squ?re; and bringing down the win- dow with a crash, he hopped into bed again. "They are living man and wife to this day," the Squire always added, when he told the story. THE ROMANS AND THEIR WIVES.—The affection of Aurelius Marcus, a Roman soldier, for his wife, is evinced by a stone in the Norman keep at New- castle, which commemorates "his most holy wife, who lived 33 years without a stain." Another sorrow- ing warrior perpetuates the name of "his incompar- able wife, with whom he lived 27 years without having had a single squabble Paley, on hearing at Auckland Castle of a similar connubial phenomenon, exclaimed to his informant, the bishop's lady, "Mighty dull, madame, I think ty THE COMMENCEMENT OF TRANSPORTATION.— The first distinct notice of the modern transportation system is to be found in 18 Car. II., c. 3, which gives the judges power, at their discretion, to execute or to transport for life the moss-troopers of Cumberland and Northumberland. The punishment was inflicted fre- quently in an illegal manner up to the reign of George I., when its operation was extended and legalised. During the reign of James II. transportation, or rather reduction to slavery was a favourite, and, to many parties, a profitable punishment. Dr. Lingard quotes a petition, setting forth that seventy persons, who had been apprehended on account of the Salisbury rising of Penruddock and Grove, after a year's im- prisonment, had been sold at Barbadoes for 1,550 lbs. of sugar. Among them were divines, officers, and gentlemen, who were represented as grinding at the mills, attending at the furnaces, and digging in that scorching island, whipped at whipping-posts, and sleeping in styes worse than those of hogs in England." LONG SERMONS.—Rev. Wm. Taylor, in The Model Preacher," says :-—" Often when a preacher has driven a nail in a sure place, instead of clinching it, and securing well the advantage, he hammers away till he breaks the head off, or splits the board." MAGAZINE LITERATURE.—One wonders how the innumerable cheap magazines, ever crowding into notice, can possibly find a market; and if he examines into their general quality, he will find little ground of congratulation in the extent to which they do find one. They are (almost) all of one cast and hue. The promi- nent objects are to excite and amuse. The invariable tale, and the light literary sketch, are both written for effect. They are written to be read, and rarely to in- struct-rarely because the writer had something to say. Literature has become a profession, far more than a spontaneous outgrowth and normal function of a robust intellectual vitality, and the writer who de- pends for his dinner on the sale of his article must please to live." Where are we to find a cure ? The difficulty lies greatly in the relation of demand and supply. The current taste is met, not sought to be elevated, because the one course pays better than the other. Supply the higher quality and you limit the market. It is so everywhere—in the pulpit, and on the platform-the better the quality in general the thinner the audience. We need a better education to secure discriminative appreciation, but especially a more earnest style of training. We need a training inducing the living conviction that responsibility covers privilege—that our enjoyments and our work are as sacred as our religion-that, properly regarded, they form a part of it. That every one, whatever his wealth, whatever his position, whatever the nature of his powers, has a serious social responsibility—that society expects his services, wants his services, claims his services-up to the measure of his means and opportunities.—Aber- deen Free Press. RANK AMONG EURs.-London is the great fur mart of the world. The ermine is considered most precious, and next to that the Russian sable; but the real sables are rare, for according to Ol": latest Russian statistics, or 'y 25,000 skins of the beautiful little animal were produced during an entire year in the Czar's Empire. The prices paid for them are fabulous, a fine set being worth 2,000 dols. Next to the sable in popularity and costliness, ranks the marten, or American sable. The Hudson Bay sables are next in value, and are almost as expensive as the Russian. Next is the mink, pie-enrnent in beauty, wear, and durability. It is not, perhaps, so delicate-looking as the stone Marten, or so artful-looking as the African monkey, or so captivating as the ermine, but it is quiet and graceful, and more thrifty than them all. Besides the mink, the stone marten, the Fitch, the Siberian squirrel, and the Persian and Russian lamb, are in daily use. The skin of the black bear forms e, the most magnificent sleigh robes—a good turn-out of which, including the robe and apron, costs upwards of 100 dols. The Canadian furs most esteemed in Europe are the black fox and the silver fox. These are found only in the Hudson's Bay Territory, or on the north shore of the St. Lawrence. The raccoon and the muskrat are also confined exclusively to this continent. The muskrat, and the rabbit, fand the American hare, dyed, form the bulk of the furs worn in England. —New York Enquirer. FLOATING A WHALE AT VANCOUVER'S.—The canoes now pull towards shore, the lines become taut, and suddenly the monster feels himself moving slowly but steadily towards the land; his struggles are tremendous, but fruitless he is literally a fish out of water, and hopelessly in the power of his Lilliputian foes, who laugh at his strength, and utter ridiculous imitations of his attempts to spout, while the inhabitants for miles round crowd to the scene of triumph, singing, and beating large drums made of the hollowed bole of a tree, over the ends of which is stretched the skin of a sea-lion. As soon as the whale is beyond low-water mark the work is done, as they have only to wait till the tide leaves their prize high and dry upon the beach, where the heat of the sun soon puts an end to its sufferings. The favourite blubber is then dug out and put away in calabashes for the future, after every one has eaten as much as he can possibly hold. However, they look forward with more anxiety to the feasts to come, as they prefer their favourite dish in a state decidedly gamey. "-Once a Week. THE THUMB.—" If other proof were wanting," says Newton, "the thumb would convince me of the existence of God." The thumb represents will, energy, rectitude. At Rome they cut off the thumb of cowards, nollex truncatus, whence comes the word "poltroon." The Romans raised the thumb to condemn the gladiator to death. A small thumb indicates little genius for men, httle virtue among women; a great thumb a great thinker-a master of himself. ECHOES OF THE ALPs.-In a few minutes the guide appeared with the horn, aud blew. Heavens! what a melody of replications How in the hollows of the hills every harsh tone died away, and all the softer notes flowed to and fro in tenderest music, and fainted in distant reverberations more and more ex- quisite, more and more exquisitely low. Can it be a mere echo of those rude blasts ? It seemed as though some choir of spirits had caught each tone as it came from the peasant's horn, and had defied it there among the clouds, and had repeated it over and over with divinest variations, to show how crabbed were the sounds which he produced, and yet how ravishing they might one day become, when to the symphony of silver strings they rang out amid the seraph harps and choral harmonies of heaven. AUSTRALIA.—Whenever the day shall arrive for writing the history of the great island-continent of Australia, the task will be one of transcendant interest, and the story one verging on romance. The historian will have to describe the first settlement of a country which by that time will probably be runsurpassed for its riches, and inferior to none of tlie States of Europe in political importance; and to describe the early government, and trace the gradual changes which converted a transmarine gaol into one of the greatest communities of free men on the earth. He will have to relate the progress of that vast pastoral interest, the source of incalculable wealth, from the eight merinos imported by an enterprising emigrant (M'Arthur) to the hundreds of millions of fine- woolled sheep which will then wander over its enormous plains; he will have to record the progress of emigration, from a few scattered farmers and Government officials', who for more than a quarter of a century formed the only voluntary additions to the population, to the time when emigrants were shipped by thousands and tens of thousands from the parent state; he wi'l have to note the price of land, from the period when the bribe of free rations and convict labour was needed to induce a colonist to accept it, until the time when lots were sold at the rate of thousands of pounds per acre; the wonderful expansion of trade, from almost primitive barter to a steady export of many millions sterling in wool, tallow, copper, and gold; and, above all, that marvellous transformation, by which a territory, long known only as the despised and abhorred convict colony of Great Britain, became the place in all the world in which labour was best rewarded, population most rapidly augmented, and life most easily sustained, — Australian Coloniesin the Quarterly Review.
HOW TO GET ON IN THE WORLD.
HOW TO GET ON IN THE WORLD. There are different ways of getting on in the world," for it does not always mean accumulating a great deal of money. Money is a very useful article in its way, but it is quite pos- sible to get on with but small means it being a great mis- take to suppose that we must wait for a large sum of money before we can achieve a good result. The following excellent advice by a writer in Chambers' Journal shows that perse- verance will generally lead to a successful end :— "The destruction of the poor is their poverty." I have often heard this saying break, as it were, from the heart of a poor man, when some unhappy circum- stance brought home to him the difficulties of his position. It is affecting to hear such an exclamation from a perhaps worthy and meritorious fellow-creature; and sometimes the idea involved in it may be pro- ductive of wide-spread feelings by no means comfort- able for the community, Let me try if I cannot put the matter on such a footing as to give comfort to both the poor and rich. If we study to analyse the contrasted conditions of the poor and rich-of the labouring man, we shall say, and the employer of labour-we shall find that the difference lies mainly here-namely, that the labourer has but himself, his bare self, his hands, his strength, and his intellect, to work for him; while the employer, besides all this, has something else-namely, money, and through money, a command of materials and the labour of others, to work for him-a multiplication, as it may be called, of the means at the service of his less fortunate brother. It so happens, too, that the man possessed of capital is thereby enabled to become richer and richer, at a constantly increasing ratio, while the poor man remains stationary; thus causing the con- trast between the two to become greater and greater. So also will it be, to some extent, even with the intelli- gence and moral force of the two men, for, while the employer rises as a moral and intellectual being with the sense of extended power, and the discipline he ac- quires from the dealing with large undertakings, the labourer stands still in these respects, able only to ignorantly wonder and chafe at the great advantages which he sees falling to the share of one whom he thinks in essential respeets no better than himself. And how is this multiplied means to be obtained by the poor or labouring man, so that he may partake of the advantages of his neighbour ? Obviously, only by his storing up something out of the results of his labour, by his not eating up all, day by day, that he works for. This has been the beginning or origin of all capital, and there is no other way of creating it. The first steps are the most difficult, and it is there that the force of the adage lies-The destruction of the poor is their poverty. It is naturally most difficult to spare from a small income, because needs are there at the greatest proportion to means; but such is the order of Pro- vidence in many other things; for example, it is more difficult to clear and till a field in a new than an old country-it is more difficult for an ignorant than for a cultivated man to learn anything. Perhaps God meant this for a trial and discipline to our faculties, and there is probably some great general good derived from it. Anyhow, there is the fact lying indisputable before us, that matters do stand so. It is for us to make the best of them. Thousands upon thousands are, of course, every day encountering this difficulty, with the stout hearts and the patient self-denial that are necessary; and thou- sands upon thousands are every day seen, to some ex- tent, realising the good results that are promised to all such efforts. It is a most interesting problem to watch. A country mason has been working for wages during several years. He has saved a few pounds. He under- takes the building of a cottage or a stone fence, having wherewith to buy part 01 the material^ and engage two assistants. Gaining something from the job, he can undertake the building of a bigger house, a more extensive wall, next time. He has greater profits from tins, and so he goes on till, in four or five years, you see him established as a master builder, with a family nicely housed and dressed, and everything handsome about him. Such a man is often envied and sneered at as worldly possibly, there may have been a little worldliness in him; but, on the whole, there is gene- rally a moral advance in such cases, as might indeed be reasonably expected, for in the self-denial involved in the first efforts at sparing, and in the consequent self-control acquired, there lies some virtue. Our mason is but the type of an enormous class of men throughout our industrious community—self-raised men, men who at first had but their hands to work for them, but afterwards were able, by sparing from the needs of the hour, to acquire the means of multiplying their powers, and at the same time to advance as moral and in- tellectual beings. What men have done, men may do. What has been done once, may be done again. It is not always that even men of good abilities will find onoortunities of employing savings to good mercantile1 advantage, so as_ to raise themselves greatly above their original condition. But there is not any case in which a man will not be benefited one way or another by a little store. Every penny saved is a tooth drawn out of the soul-oppressing adage, The destruction of the poor is their poverty." In our present mercantile polity, there is more than the necessary difficulty of employing small savings to profit; but this is sus- ceptible of change for the better, and may be looked for. Even now, the working-classes may employ sav- ings in hundreds of ways advantageous to themselves for further saving, or for positive gain. For example, they may combine to get the chief necessaries of life at wholesale prices, and so save from ten to twenty per cent. Some have had the energy to start trades and factories on their own account, and with no lack of suc- cess, as I have been assured. That is a path in which many more may walk. The cleverness and pertinacity which we often see them expending in struggles with employers for impossible objects, would suffice to con- vert large groups of workmen into guilds of masters. There is in this country no avenue of success closed against any department of the community. But even though the talent should have to be deposited at a small interest in a savings' bank, it would still be a wholesome and most useful addition to the natural powers and defences of the man possessing it. It would still, in that form, be to a certain degree a pro- tection against the crushing force of the adage, The destruction of the poor is their poverty." One is sometimes disposed to look on Mr. Bareman's case in this world as a very hard and sad one and indeed to feel that the whole scene of the world is one of dismal inequality and partiality. But it is needless, perhaps something worse, to complain of it. It is a system of contention, designed, to all appearance, for the evocation of the active play of our faculties, and perhaps no other would have served such good ends. Let Mr. Bareman grapple with the natural difficulties of his situation, and he will find himself all the better for the good fight that he has fought. If, after his success, he turns an eye of sympathy on his still struggling fellow, and holds out a helping hand to him, he will find himself made still better in the depths of his heart and soul, by the sacrifice he makes. Such are moral goods obviously derived from the inequality of the conditions of men. So, perhaps, what looks at first like a system of contention, is, after all, a principle needful to the social union.
A STORY OF A WHALE.
A STORY OF A WHALE. Nearly thirty years ago, as'a French vessel was going down the Thames, her captain saw a huge object floun- dering about on a sandbank, near the Nore. A boat was put out, and this object was ascertained to be a large specimen of a sperm whale which had got on the sand- bank, and was gradually being left liigh and dry as the tide went down. They waited till the wateu allowed them to get to the whale, which appeared almost dead, and then passing a rope from the ship, they tied it tightly round him above his tail, and returned to the ship. As the tide rose the whale floated, the ship set sail, towing along the whale in high glee, thinking in their simplicity that they were going to take him as a prize into Calais harbour. Mistaken Frenchmen! They had not got far before the whale showed symptoms of returning life, by wriggling, twisting, and not follow- ing the ship in the orderly manners-becoming a dead whale. At length the dragging through the water and the pulling at his tail roused him up completely; he came quite to life, and threatened to damage the ship. mhe Frenchmen finding they had caught a Tartar, cut Ae rope as it passed over the stern of the ship, and away went the whale one way, back again towards the mouth of the Thames, with a great, long, thick rope still tied to his tail and dragging behind him; the ship went the other way, towards Calais, having lost the prize. The whale was seen occasionally for some days after this, still with the rope on his tail. At last he foolishly came into Whitstable Bay. The men in the oyster- boats saw him, and, by shouting and splashing forced him up into shallow water, where the tide left him. They then wisely made sure of him by killing him out- right. No pig-sticking knives were big enough to cut his throat, so they fixed scythes on the poles, and pierced him till he died. Then came the question, what was to be done with him? and at last a deputa- tion of fishermen went to Messrs —— and Co., in the city, the great dealers in whale-oil, whalebone, &c., who gave the fishermen 80?. for their capture, and sent down men, blubber-knives, iron pots, &c., to boil him up. At the same time an offer was made to a London society, to which my friend was attached, to send down and take what parts of the whale were wanted for anatomical and scientific purposes. Of course he went down immediately to Whitstable Bay, and there found this gigantic sperm whale, between 70 and 80 feet long, surrounded by workmen digging and cutting the blubber off his huge carcase, and filling the surrounding atmosphere with a most overpowering effluvium, which was anything but pleasant. Every- thing was on such a gigantic scale that the dissection could not be carried on without the aid of horses so when the blubber was all taken off the upper side of the whale, my friend harnessed the horses to the ribs, and hauled them out one by one, thus exposing all the contents of the body. He then carefully descended into the gigantic mass of anatomical horrors, and took out what parts he wanted. This service was not, how- ever, done without danger, for when dissecting the enormous heart his foot slipped, and he fell into one of the cavities of the heart, his feet passing down into the great artery, the aorta. Assistance was luckily at hand, or he would have slipped down inky this huge pipe, and might have met with a fatal accident. To show the narrow escape he had, he subsequently cut rings out of this aorta, and found he could pass them, without stretching, over his head and shoulders right down to his feet. Nothing daunted by the smell, or other disagreeable circumstances, he continued his dissection till he had made a valuable and interesting collection of prepara- tions. One morning, when he was still working away, and the men boiling or trying down" the oil, a very official-looking personage came up, and in a haughty manner said-" Leave off work, all of you, directly; do nothing more to the whale. I claim this fish (he was no naturalist, for a whale is a warm-blooded animal, and no fish) in the name of the lord of the manor, and nothing whatever must be touched or re- moved." My friend had just taken out the whale's eye, which exhibits remarkable structures, and, offering it the new comer, said, Well, I suppose the lord of the manor does not want the whale's eye ?" You may keep that, sir," was the answer. This disagreeable in- truder then departed. While the dissectors, both anatomical and commer- cial, were recovering their wonder, from another quarter of the compass came another Jack-in Office, who stalked into the assembled crowd, and with a wave of his stick proclainied-" Touch nothing—move nothing —I claim all this in the name of the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports." „ Vultures smell the stinking carcase from afar, so too did it seem that the smell of the unfortunate whale had found its way as far as London, and even to the Crown authorities, for yet another human vulture arrived on the wings of the wind, and spreading his official papers over the putrid mass, pronounced, "This is a royal fish, and I claim it in the name of the Crown." Here, then, was a pretty mess, both literal and phy- sical the three claimants set to work disputing with each other for possession; the fishermen quietly wiped their oily hands, packed up their traps, and adjourned to the public-houses to drink out their eighty pounds and talk over the matter. My friend, seeing nothing could be done, packed up his whale's eye and went back to London in an oyster-boat; as he carried such aroma about with him that they would not take him in the coach. The three vultures then departed to their respective nests, and transferred the cause to the lawyers, who managed to sum out their disputes for a whole year. In the meantime a claimant, and that a most powerful one, appeared; Father Neptune, seeing that mortals would not take advantage of his gifts, ordered his white-capped servants, the rolling sea breakers, to remove his present; they did so, bit by bit, rolling back into the bosom of the ocean, blubber, oil, bones, and anatomical preparations, except the huge jaws, which were saved, and, if I mistake not, are now in a garden at Canterbury. So that, by the time the lawyers had finished their learned arguments, there was nothing whatever left of the sperm whale about which they had been so foolishly disputing.— The Field. =-- No co'tmiumcations can be inserted unless authenticated by the name and address of the writer.